THE PORT RAIL: Leaders were prepping before Pearl Harbor

On April 18, 1942, a group of 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers, with Lt. Col. James Doolittle piloting the lead bomber, struck Tokyo and several other Japanese cities with 500-pound bombs.

By Larry Clayton

On April 18, 1942, a group of 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers, with Lt. Col. James Doolittle piloting the lead bomber, struck Tokyo and several other Japanese cities with 500-pound bombs. While the surprise Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor five and a half months earlier on Dec. 7, 1941, was not entirely unexpected, the Doolittle Raid marked the true beginning of America’s response to the Japanese attack, which brought the United States fully into World War II.Saturday was the 72nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, which did indeed shock the U.S. and led to America’s entry into the war on Dec. 8, 1941. But was the United States as astonished and unprepared for that first year of war as popular history has described?When Jimmy Doolittle’s Raiders struck the first positive blow for the Americans in the Pacific, then reeling from a series of stinging losses to Japanese advances, his pilots and crews were but the tip of a mighty effort then working its way through American life, from the expanding military establishment to an astonishing transformation of American industry.Instead of cars and trucks rolling off the assembly lines, factories were ramping up the production of tanks and airplanes by the time the Raiders took off from the deck of the carrier Hornet, which was plunging through heavy seas to get them as close to Japan as possible.By Dec. 7, 1941, for example, the draft, introduced in 1940 to prepare America for war, already had 2.2 million men in uniform. President Franklin Roosevelt, elected for a record third term in November 1940, was determined to bring America into the war on the side of England, but he had to buck the powerful tide of isolationism and neutrality in the country. He could not move any faster than public opinion, or what Congress was willing to give him by way of help for England, even when most Americans understood, like him, that it was a struggle of liberty, freedom and civilization against a brutal Nazi tyranny. By 1941, the National Guards of the states had been federalized, Roosevelt had called up the Army Reserves and war preparations were increasing across scores of areas.Jimmy Doolittle himself was called back into the service in early June 1940 by his old mentor in the Army Air Force, Gen. Hap Arnold, precisely to scale up production of aircraft, power plants and the tools of war. The month before, Roosevelt had called for increasing the production of war planes to 50,000 a year. This was a country moving to a war footing.Ever the technician and scientist on the leading edge of aviation, Doolittle promoted the new 100-octane aviation gasoline to go with the newest and most powerful engines for war planes then being designed. As Arnold’s personal emissary, Doolittle — mustered back into the service as a lieutenant colonel — demanded that the GM-owned Allison engine manufacturer in Indianapolis meet the high specifications of aviation. Later in 1940, Doolittle was assigned to Detroit to work even more directly with automobile makers as they switched rapidly to aviation. He rankled and rode the engine and automobile manufacturers to get it right, for he was not only highly trained in the science of aviation (with a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering from M.I.T.) he also was a flier himself who demanded his equipment be the best, the fastest, at the cutting edge.In fall 1941, Doolittle traveled to England and produced an immensely detailed report on war-making in Great Britain and how the U.S. could benefit from England’s experiences.The Doolittle whose fame as a warrior and aviator would be guaranteed by leading his B-25 Raiders in April 1942 over Tokyo had been hard at work the previous two years in preparing American aviation, and the country, for war.While the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was indeed a surprise, the Doolittles, Arnolds, Eisenhowers, Halseys, Pattons and others who emerged as America’s war leaders were getting ready. If there were unsteadiness and fear in America at what Japan’s mighty war machine might do to us, it was not a fear shared by America’s professional warriors. They just wanted a chance to strike at the new enemy. It came that April day in 1942.Later made into a movie, “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” the raid lifted the spirits of Americans reeling from Japanese attacks across the immense Pacific, and before the end of the year, the momentum was swinging back to the United States.

Larry Clayton is a retired University of Alabama history professor. Readers can email him at larryclayton7@gmail.com.